Category Archives: Research Guides

As some cool Celtic musicians once said, “Everyone is 1/365th Irish.” You know, because of St. Patrick’s Day!

However, if you have some real Emerald Isle blood in you (like 12% of Americans), and your ancestors landed in Utah (and maybe stayed awhile), there is a chance the Utah State Archives Research Center has some records about them.

Naturalization records were created as immigrants started and completed the process to become American citizens. The process was a tad harder to track prior to 1906 when the predecessor to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services standardized the forms and procedures. For example, before 1906 an individual could become naturalized in any court in the land, regardless of where they lived (or passing through). If you can untangle the likely courts and jurisdictions to look through, there may be a variety of aids like indexes (either online or more likely in the actual record books) and inventories of holdings.

The processing and research staff of the Utah State Archives is excited to unveil the latest edition of the Utah State District Court Records Guide. Work associated with this resource began in 2005 with a systematic inventory of historic records in all of the 29 state district courts. The information compiled during this inventory was reconciled against all known holdings of the State Archives, allowing research staff to better assist patrons with historic court record research. This effort has also provided a useful model for formulating processing projects. Between July 2007 and June 2008, all courts records from the Fifth District Court (Beaver, Iron and Washington County) and the Territorial Second District Court were processed with funding assistance from a NHPRC grant. Currently, staff is working to improve access to records from two of the largest courts in the state including the Second District Court in Weber County (Ogden) and the Fourth District Court in Utah County (Provo).

In addition to the links to records descriptions found in this guide, the following guides and histories may be of use:

After checking some external links on the Naturalization Records Guide, discovered that the previously announced U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Genealogy Program is now active. The relevant links on the guide have been updated. Meanwhile, if you are looking for citizenship records from 1906 to 1956, their program offers index searches and records requests for a fee that should be more timely than a generic Freedom of Information Act request.

Added a new research guide from an offline document prepared a couple of years ago. It is a compilation of data available online from the Mining Safety and Health Research section of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. In updating it, realized that last year’s Crandall Canyon Mine explosion would need to be sadly added to the end of the list.